When Music meets Science Fiction

The good fellas at Robot Chicken present for us a remake of Star Wars II "The Wrath Of Khan" in the style of a Bel Canto Italian opera:

Just Brilliant.

Sarah Palin's Rhythm

I've seen this on a number of blogs now, but I think it's worth another post.

Pianist Henry Hey improvises an accompaniment to a Sarah Palin interview.

it's genius!

It's only fun until ...

Well, I didn't exactly lose an eye, but this past weekend's Da Camera retreat had at least one exciting moment.

The location of our retreat is in a very large log cabin about an hour outside Edmonton, and a good half-hour from any major centre with a hospital (this becomes important later in the story).

From Friday night to Sunday morning, we have scheduled in about eleven hours of rehearsals, our promotional choir photos, which include new head shots for myself, our accompanist and my assistant, plus a variety of social activities which will include board games, ping-pong, foosball, cards, good friends and good wine.

For the most part everything went very smoothly, we made incredible progress on our repertoire, including big steps in the memorization process of our spiritual set (something that our choir is not used to doing - memorizing that is).  One valuable tip I can give for a choir retreat is that if you have the space, rehearsing in a circle, in mixed formation, does wonders!  I found we had fewer moments of fatigue - especially when everyone is so exposed and feels they have to work and concentrate that much harder.  We also had a head start on some of our tricky March repertoire, which we are planning on recording, and in our spare time, we sang through every Messiah chorus, including the one that Novello has put in the appendix - just for fun - and also because we are going to be a part of the ESO Messiah this year.

Saturday night, after our last rehearsal, we brought out the wine and games and played until late in the evening.  Having still one more rehearsal to do in the morning, I thought that an early sleep would be welcome, and I head to bed around 10:30... 

The room that my wife and I were staying in  was on the second floor, carved into the side of the house where the roof is most sloped.  Thereby creating a room with a very high roof on one side, quickly going to a crawl space on the other side.  The only place you can stand fully upright is either by the door, or near the window, which is cut into the slope of the roof.  The problem is - the roof is white, and the walls are also white, making it difficult to tell where one starts and the other stops, especially around the aforementioned window - where I found myself standing.  Looking forward to sleep, I made a very quick motion to my side of the bed (on the slopey side of the room) whereby, at full speed, my head made full contact with the corner of the roof and the wall under the window cutout.  Rather surprised at this, I fell to the floor in great pain and grabbed my head.  When I moved my hands to show my wife the damage, the great flow of blood started.

We do have one retired nurse in the choir, who suggested we seek medical help with this one, just to be sure I didn't leave my mark all over the room, like a CSI crime scene. 

Long story short .... 

2 and half hours later, I was back at the lodge, with three stitches in my head, and one tetanus shot in my arm.

I'm glad to be home in my own bed - where the angles of my walls and ceilings are all 90 degrees.

Tongue Twister of the day

There I am in front of the choir this week, trying to teach this line to the choir, from Handel's Solomon:  "Now the hard fought battle won" Which is set in a very excited double-choir-quickly-sung-polyphony type of thing.  

Of course in good English diction, the "r" in "hard" should not be pronounced.

So I demonstrate .. "Hard Fought .. H-aw-d Fought ... h-aw-d fought ...  Hot Fart" 

Well, so much for productivity on that movement.

Let's see you say "Hard Fought" 10x fast!

Wedding Stories

One of the blogs that I read regularly, and enjoy immensely, is Jason Health's Blog, Arts Addict, found on the Adapistration collection of Blogs (he also publishes the Doublebass Blog, which has a certain amount of cross-over on his Arts Addict blog, but is worth checking in on). He has a knack at telling great gig stories, and his recent account of a wedding where a colleague was to play "Here Comes the Bride" on the double bass is a great example of this.

It got me thinking about a post that I've been meaning to put up here in a while, and I figure that it is time!

I've been playing or singing at weddings for over twenty five years now. At the hight of my wedding playing career, I would sometimes play up to three weddings a day, every Saturday from June to September. I have no idea how many weddings I've actually played in my life, but I figure it's in the neighbourhood of 200 to 250. 99.9% of the time, they go off without a hitch (except for the fact that they actually GET hitched). There are the odd few where a bride, or even groom, cannot get through the vows through the tears, or a flower girl or ring bearer doesn't do what they are supposed to do. There are the fainting groomsmen, and at least one case of "HELP ME" on the bottom of the shoes. This one wedding though - will be one I will never forget.

It was about fifteen years ago, at a small catholic parish in Ottawa. The box of whistles, which they called an "organ", was located in the back gallery of the church, about 2 stories higher that the rest of the church, and well back from the small group of guests. I arrived in good time to find the Father doing a few pre-service duties, including moving chairs, setting up the unity candle, and the elements for Mass. Two things I noticed about the priest. He was so old, I assumed the church was built around him, and his glasses where so thick, that they had to be made from the bottom of 750ml 7-up bottles.

About 20 minutes before the wedding, the first few guests began to arrive, and I opened up my trusty wedding book and started into my prelude music. The only connection I had with the front of the church was a 5x7 inch mirror on the console, giving me a view of about the front third of the aisle and the whole altar. All I really need as the usual cue to start a wedding processional is about 2 minutes after the bride's mum's pew has been seated, and the groomsmen are in a nice straight line with the priest looking down the aisle.

About 15 minutes into my prelude, I happened to glance in the mirror to see the priest lighting the altar candles. The one thing that caught my eye was that the tool he was using to light the altar candles (a typical combination snuffer and lighter, with an extendable wick) had the wick extended to about a half a foot, causing a very large flame to protrude from the top of the device. I kept glancing back and forth from the music, to the mirror. He began to light the candles with the agility of a hippopotamus. slamming the flame into the top of each candle. I looked away for a moment, and then heard an incredible GASP and CLUNK from the front of the church, and looked back in the mirror again to see the entire right side of the altar in flames! A candle had fallen over, and set most of the altar frontal on fire. I stopped playing, and planed my exit. A few of the ushers ran to the front of the church and very unceremoniously stomped on the fire until it was extinguished.



After the commotion had ceased, I resumed the prelude music. The music on the next page? a Suite from Handel's Water Music.

How appropriate.

Monday Laugh

Something here to brighten up the start of the week courtesy of The Onion.

Charles Ives Meets President Bush

Thanks to Tom Allen, and his great CBC morning show (which tragically will be going off the air this coming fall to make way for the new CBC2 programing changes - but that's another blog post) for finding this good one:

Quote from Tom Allen's "Junk Drawer":

Here's the musical event Charles Ives waited for his entire life. On April 16, 2008, Pope Benedict XVI visited the White House. Two musical groups were there to welcome him - the Herald Trumpets from the US Army Band, and the President's Own Marine Band. The President, not surprisingly, was there, too. Protocol says that any time the President of the United States turns up in an official role, the band has to play "Hail to the Chief." As you hear from the clip, protocol apparently doesn't say they have to play it in just one key. The story is that one group came to rehearsal and the other didn't, so they ended up, at the big moment, playing the same piece in different keys. I've received, predictably, contradictory reports of which group, the Army or the Marines, fired in the wrong direction, but the result was a direct hit for music fans who like their military bands on the experimental side. It's fantastic!

Here's the link to the video and sound

It is a real player video and might require you to upload something to hear it.

Thinking on the podium

Well, here we go again - another story of an operatic production which nearly collapses due to a sick singer... and this time - the quick thinking conductor steps in!

Read the story here

(Courtesy of "The Rest is Noise")

Life in the Orchestra Pit

Once again, one of my favourite bloggers, Jason Heath, has posted a funny true-life story about his life in the trenches as a freelance double-bassist.

The story has all the potential of disaster:

• A "mobster look-alike" conductor who can't speak English
• A translator who knows nothing about music
• An orchestra made up of all freelance players, who don't normally play together
• The panic of wondering if the conductor is in TWO or FOUR.
• All this happening in the orchestra pit, while on stage, there is a ballet trying to happen.
  

Hilarity ensues.

Do read the full post here.